A reservoir of dry wit, quiet kindness and enduring wisdom, legendary coach and teacher Francis Davis Millet—“Mr. Millet” as Miltonians know him—was revered among generations of Milton alumni and among today’s students.
Mr. Millet was born on May 25, 1917. He was named after his grandfather, Francis Davis Millet, a drummer boy during the American Civil War and Harvard graduate (Class of 1869), who became one of the most brilliant painters of the Gilded Age, and was lost in the sinking of the Titanic. Milton Academy’s Francis Davis Millet grew up on Long Island, New York, and attended the Green Vale School. In eighth grade he went to Middlesex Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, where he first picked up a squash racket.
Mr. Millet began teaching while still a student at Harvard College, tutoring young students in Latin at the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1940 and taught for two years at a boys’ school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he met Milton faculty member Arthur Perry. When he returned east, Mr. Millet took Arthur Perry’s invitation to contact him, and he joined the Milton Academy faculty as a sixth grade teacher in 1942. By 1945, Mr. Millet had become floor master of Robbins House and taught in the English and Classics departments; by 1968 he taught Latin exclusively, and he continued to do so through 2007.
Mr. Millet devoted himself fully, with affection and firm support, to students for nearly seven decades as a teacher, advisor, dormitory master, secretary of the faculty, director of financial aid, director of admission and, of course, as architect of the School’s squash program. For 29 years he lived in dormitories, and afterward he lived on campus, involved daily in the lives of students.
Mr. Millet helped Milton increase the diversity among students and faculty, implement coeducation in the early 1980s, and enroll greater numbers of international students. A frequent traveler to Hong Kong on Milton’s behalf, Mr. Millet developed particularly close relationships with many Hong Kong students and families over the years—now graduates and parents of current students. Mr. Millet witnessed numerous significant facilities changes across campus—repurposing, building, dedicating and opening structures from Cox Library in 1970 to Millet and Norris houses in 2004, to the Pritzker Science Center in 2010, highlighting a few. Mr. Millet navigated, with reliable flexibility and open-mindedness, shifts in patterns, policies and people. He served seven School heads—Cyrus Jones, Arthur Perry, David Wicks, Jerome Pieh, Edwin Fredie, Robin Robertson, and Milton’s current leader, Todd Bland.
Reflecting on changes during his tenure, Mr. Millet used to say that he’d outlasted the typewriter and was prepared to outlast the computer. He was the first coach on campus, however, to use the Web site to spread the word about his sport. Responding to the consistent interest in Milton squash among alumni players, he made sure that squash team history, roster and results were blasting into cyberspace earlier than most other news and information at Milton.
Students, faculty and alumni treasure Mr. Millet’s handwritten notes in calligraphy. He sent them, in inquiry and response, over all his years, and until 2012 his hand rendered in calligraphy every one of Milton’s diplomas.
A funeral mass, open to all those who wish to attend, will take place at St. Agatha Parish, 432 Adams Street in Milton, on Tuesday, November 21 at 10:30 a.m. The burial will be private for family only.
